12-16-2008 01:47
It was quite an experience to be invited to support Linden Lab on a real big international conference and exhibition on online education. So I think I should post a few words about it here.

It was a 3 days conference and a rather big exhibition. The Linden Lab booth was near the row of computers free to be used for internet access, so there was a lot of traffic, everyone found the booth. Great idea to do the reservation near a crowded place.

As it was an event in Germany, 3 German groups of residents showed their work on the LL stand: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Goethe Institut and vhs, which is the adult evening school I am teaching for. Almost every German resident knows vhs in SL, especially after we had won the European E-Learning aware Eurelea.

We had a lot to do, conference visitors were quite interested to learn, how we use SL as an interactive e-learning platform, use all the advantages of a virtual 3D world for making a learning experience even more exciting. These 3 days were continously talking about e-leaning in SL on a very high level.

The feedback was great: no matter if it was a Germen professor, an international provider of e-learning platforms or education specialists from all over the world, most of them agreed, that we are 2-3 years ahead of most of the other e-learning platforms and they were impressed about the great level of interaction possible in SL ... when you GET AWAY from building classes with rows of chairs to show slideshows.
SL is a platform, where you can really get away from this old kind of teaching to events, where the students are in the center of what they are supposed to learn.

It was a lot of work, a lot of talking and chatting, a lot of high level discussions, and I really enjoyed to present SL as a great tool with a great future.

Thanks to the two Lindens on the stand: Clare and Jean.
They really helped us, were present when information about Linden Labs was needed, but held back, when it was about psychology, didactics, objectives or group dynamics. Yep, together we were a great team, I hope, the communication will not stop now.

I will stop here, if you want to know more, send me a notecard inworld or put your questions and comments here.
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I script, I teach, I build, I lag (R), I crash (TM). ... But then I relog.